Pornography: Bring It Into the Light

Seems like Kanye West is a hot topic. I’m old enough to say without embarrassment that my knowledge of him begins and ends with him being married to a Kardashian and his tussle with Taylor Swift. But a headline about him caught my eye a couple of days ago. I clicked through and discovered this:

“Playboy was my gateway into full-blown pornography addiction. My dad had a Playboy left out at age 5, and it’s affected almost every choice I made for the rest of my life,” West told Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s Beats 1 on Thursday. “From age 5, to now having to kick the habit. And it just presents itself in the open, like it’s OK. And I stand up and say, you know, it’s not OK.” (Source)

And that prompted me to write the blog post I never intended to write. I’d been reading about silence and wondering whether I really should be saying something about anything. And yet, I felt like something else needed to be said.

In the days since All in Good Time‘s release, a few people have commented about my “bravery” in tackling the pornography issue in this novel. That was (forgive the pun) a novel thought to me.

I set out to tell a story. Pornography played a role in it from the beginning, albeit a very minor one. As I revised the book (again and again), the theme grew stronger, extending from one “off-screen” character to minor and major characters as well, meaning my hero and heroine.

Why don’t we talk about pornography? We’re obviously consuming it – to the tune of $3 billion annually in the United States alone. Globally, it’s $13 billion. (Source)

All in Good Time is not autobiographical. (Or biographical. I think I should clarify that for my husband’s sake.) But our lives have been touched by pornography in many ways.

Some time in high school, I read a John Saul book. I read several of his thrillers, but I remember little about them. The one I best recall involved a baby that died, and I couldn’t tell you more about it than that.

But I have a vivid memory of a particular scene in which a boy masturbates while watching a couple have sex through an attic window. I can recall specific lines, word for word, decades after I first read it.

Believe it or not, I didn’t read more than a handful of romances until I started writing them and heeded the advice to read in my genre. I read mostly Christian romance, but I would occasionally pick out another sale romance ebook that I thought, based on description, reviews, etc., was a “clean” read. Every once in while, I was duped.

I know many people just skip over those scenes if they don’t want to read them, but I can’t or don’t. I have a personality quirk that prevents me from skipping over boring parts of books because I read them from cover to cover. So skip over the sex scenes? Not likely.

I’m more careful now and more skilled in ferreting out a book’s content. And I know not only to delete books from my Kindle but from my Amazon account as well. I’m more disciplined, I think. But I reached a point while rewriting All in Good Time in which I was persistently tempted to view things I’ve never gone looking for. What do people call it when they don’t want to name a diabolical attack? “Resistance?” Yeah, resistance.

But back to my having a read a handful of romances. Why is it when I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, I ended with romance? And specifically, what I often call Theology of the Body romance? Or, more plainly, romance that tackles tough sexual morality issues that people don’t want to talk about? (I even make oblique references to masturbation. I don’t know if anyone is picking up on them, but they are there.)

Stay With Me: a sheltered woman has a twisted notion of femininity that causes her to equate her value with her level of purity.

Ornamental Graces: a man struggles with the far-reaching consequences of his sexual sins.

Rightfully Ours: two teens in love struggle to come to terms with what they believe about premarital sex.

All in Good Time: a man’s pornography use threatens his ability to have a healthy relationship with the woman he loves.

The common thread is the characters inhabiting these stories are “good” people. Church-going, Jesus-loving, flesh and blood men and women with good and natural desires and persistent weaknesses and temptations. They need grace and a Savior.

If you think pornography isn’t a problem for “good” people, you’re wrong. Temptation doesn’t simply go away when you are trying to live a Christian life. In some cases, the devil may even ramp things up just to wheedle you.

And then there are the children. Did you know that kids under ten years old make up ten percent of porn site visitors?

You can read about all the statistics about and consequences of pornography use elsewhere – unhealthy relationships, erectile dysfunction, and more.

If you think pornography isn’t a problem for “good” people, you're wrong. We need stories that bring it to the light. Share on X

If you or someone you love is struggling with use or addiction to pornography, I’ve assembled some resources for you.

I’m grateful for those willing to talk about these issues in a frank, forthright, and theologically sound ways, particularly Christopher West and Matt Fradd. And to Mary Lenaburg, for her honesty in sharing her story.

I’m not brave. Foolish maybe, but not brave.

I simply write stories. The ones I think God is laying on my heart, though I admit to doubting my discernment in that regard. Those stories are about good people living real (ish) lives and experiencing real temptations that sometimes results in sins and the consequences they create. My audience is a niche of a niche.

I don’t write to titillate. I don’t write to shock. If there are uncomfortable things in my stories that many would rather ignore, I can only say that the best remedy I know is to . . .

---

THANKS FOR STOPPING BY! STAY A WHILE AND LOOK AROUND. LEAVE A COMMENT. SHARE WITH A FRIEND. IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE, PLEASE SIGN UP FOR MY AUTHOR NEWSLETTER TO KEEP UP-TO-DATE ON NEW RELEASES, EXTRAS, AND HOT DEALS!